


An Ode To Lives Not Lived

by Everyday_Im_Narrating



Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: (not very explicit), (seriously don't read if you're squeamish about this kind of thing), Babies, Cannibalism (Mentioned), Canon-Typical Violence, Childbirth, F/M, Fairmount, Fluff, Gen, HABIT IS NOT ROMANTICIZED IN THIS FIC, Happy Ending, Iteration Theory, Pregnancy, Princeton, as happy as you can get really, graphic descriptions of childbirth and pregnancy, mentions of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:53:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22775947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everyday_Im_Narrating/pseuds/Everyday_Im_Narrating
Summary: Stephanie wasn't - objectively speaking - the love of Evan's life. How would you even classify the love of your life when you've lived several, most of which you know next to nothing about? But she was something. And in some senses, she was everything.
Relationships: Evan/Stephanie (Everyman HYBRID)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	An Ode To Lives Not Lived

**Author's Note:**

> In case you missed it in the tags: do NOT read this fic if graphic, detailed descriptions of childbirth freak you out. Of course I had to make that a big part of the story, it's what I do for a living.  
> Also, if you *really* squint, there's one small, tiny implication of past Evan/Jeff. I didn't mean it that way, but screw it, if you want to see it that way, I don't mind, either.  
> (Any mention of Evan, Jeff, Vinny, and Alex is referring entirely to their characters on the webseries and not the actual human beings who played them. I know that's clear for most people, but I'm throwing the disclaimer in just in case.)

Stephanie wasn't - objectively speaking - the love of Evan's life. How would you even classify the love of your life when you've lived several, most of which you know next to nothing about? But she was something. And in some senses, she was everything.

Sometimes, when he wants to make himself smile - or cry, or generally feel something; he doesn't always feel anymore - he likes to close his eyes and imagine. Since he doesn't know how his previous iterations went down, he's decided to just fill in the unsettlingly large blanks with whatever he wishes were true. He hopes, at least, that the past Evans experienced happiness. More than he has. More than he will.

Maybe they were lovers in Princeton. In Evan's imagination, they met in class, arguing very passionately over something pointless. They liked to do that. Stephanie was stubborn and intelligent, and didn't usually back down from an argument she could win - whether it was about their impending deaths or the best kind of paper to draw on. Maybe that's how they started dating, and maybe they skipped class together sometimes, to fool around or to play games with the boys. Maybe then the weight of all their past lives was smaller, lighter on her shoulders; maybe she smiled more easily then. Maybe she was happy. He hopes, somewhat desperately, that she was happy.

At Fairmount, he knows they were inseparable. Knows they held hands in the playground, built sandcastles together, that she sat beside him and hugged him close when he would curl up after a panic attack, terrified of what HABIT had made him do. He knows they shared fits of giggles over silly jokes and were the kind of friends he is with Jeff and Vinny, the kind that can bicker and give each other a hard time but never, ever drift apart. Or maybe he just wishes they had been - wishes he could know for sure.

That's the part that drives him crazy, really. Not knowing.

Vinny and Jeff are a fundamental part of his life, to the point where he cannot imagine an iteration in which they weren't always together. He's known Jeff since middle school and Vinny for even longer, and has witnessed and participated in every milestone of their lives since they met. Every birthday, every good and bad decision, from small and mundane to entirely life-altering. When Vinny developed a crush on Evan's sister, Evan spent weeks trying to subtly talk him up to her, and when she turned him down, he was there to both comfort his friend and discourage him from insisting. On the other end of the spectrum, he had been sitting on Jeff's floor playing Monopoly with him and Alex when the boys received the news of their parents' deaths. It was sitting on that same floor that he wrapped an arm around each of them and held them in silence until they were ready to walk out into a world that no longer had their parents in it. They're brothers, the three of them. They've shared not only this lifetime, but countless more.

Stephanie, on the other hand, came into his life - this life, at least, the one he remembers most - so late, he barely got the chance to know her. Their affair was short-lived and tinged with desperation, just like Stephanie herself; a reprieve from the recent trouble in their lives until HABIT took it away in the most horrific way possible.

Evan thinks about that, too, not when he wants to feel something, but all the goddamn time.

He thinks about her. About her laugh - rare, but lovely, the way her eyes would squeeze shut and her nose would crinkle. About how they could sit together for hours in companionable silence, her with a canvas and him with pencil and paper, the way he was captivated by the water and melancholy and timid hope depicted in her paintings. (Well, _Stephanie_ was silent. Evan would ramble and ramble, and she would give her input only sparsely, mostly just nodding along and smiling like she knew something he didn't.)

She always seemed to know more than she let on. Too much for her own safety, too much to be allowed peace of mind at any given time, and still she was as kind and wonderful as a persn could be. Maybe that was even part of the reason - life hadn’t been kind to her, so she did her best to be kind to others. 

It wasn't as if Evan was romanticizing her trauma; he was never attracted to her because of it, or in spite of it. He loved her. The trauma was a facet of who she was, like pretty eyes and soft hair and horrid taste in music (Paramore? Really?), but it wasn't the reason Evan had fallen so hard and so fast.

Perhaps that had something to do with how he, too, was breaking, and while he was just beginning to deal with it, Stephanie was on a first-name basis with all of her inner demons. She guided him through it, in a way. Being around her made it marginally less frightening, and he couldn't be more thankful.

Being with Stephanie made a lot of things less intimidating, now that he thought about it.

Evan hasn't always been the most confident person, body-wise. He works hard on it - knows his upper body is nothing to scoff at, that his shoulders are nice and broad for a smallish guy - but there are still a lot of things that make him think twice before undressing in front of someone. With her, it was easier. Because she loved him, yes, and because she made it clear just how attractive she found him, but also, because sex with Steph was a rush too intense to really focus on anything else. Before he could worry about how he looked with his shirt off, her mouth was on his neck, her hands all over his body, and it was hard to remember what he was concerned about in the first place.

She treated sex like she treated every good thing in her life - making the absolute most of it every time, just in case it ended up being the last. When they were both riled up, it made Evan dizzy with how good it all felt, how it seemed they couldn't get enough of each other's touch everywhere, anywhere. When the rush subsided, they held each other close and pretended it wasn't both a promise and a desperate request. _Don't go, don't go, don't go_.

(It was never a matter of going willingly. He loved her, she loved him, they both knew it well. Just like how they also knew that anything - anyone - they held dear could be taken away when they least expected it.)

Her pregnancy came as a somewhat unwelcome surprise. Neither of them had been ready to become a parent - they were just beginning to understand who they were as people, for fuck's sake - and at first Evan was sure it was just another trick pulled by HABIT. Trying to convince them they'd made something together, that their lives would go on, that they'd become a family - earlier than planned, sure; a family nonetheless - before taking it back with a laugh. He didn't believe it. Stephanie didn't, either. Until the first doctor's appointment, the heartbeat in the ultrasound, a blurry image that he couldn't quite understand but that promised a small life growing inside Steph's belly. Hers. _Theirs_. They had made a person together and HABIT couldn't take that away.

Well, he could. And he did, later. But back then they made the foolish mistake of letting hope outweigh knowledge, because they were still, at the end of it all, human. They were human and in love and about to have a baby.

From the way the rest of the group was reacting to it, it felt like they were all, really, about to have a baby. Jeff and Vinny were almost as involved as Evan, asking with tender concern if Steph was alright, if she needed anything, shyly voicing questions they were curious about. If it hurt (it did, sometimes). If it was uncomfortable (it was, a bit, always). If it felt weird to have a person kicking her from the inside (yes, but in a good way).

The kicking was mind-blowing to Evan. That he couldn't see his daughter, but he could put his hand on Stephanie's belly and know that she was there, physically _feel_ her moving. Incredible, really. It soon fit into their routine - his favorite way to fall asleep was now curled up behind Steph, her back against his chest and his hand on her belly, feeling their baby move all through the night. She was there, the baby was there, the three of them were warm and safe, and some nights that was the only thing that really mattered.

And some nights he was HABIT. Some days he would wake up God knows where, alone and cold and horrified, memory flooding with blood and pain and begging and - how much of him was him, anymore? He had no idea. Worse, even, were the times he woke from a HABIT-induced trance and his memory was terrifyingly blank.

After the first few instances, he started assuming he'd hurt or killed someone, and just hoping fervently that it wasn't anyone he loved. The best-case scenarios become very bleak when you're possessed by a demon, after all. Still, his heart seemed to climb up his chest and lodge itself in his throat as he ran home from wherever he'd found himself, the image of his little found family soaked in blood becoming more and more real in his head.

But when he finally, _finally_ found them, they were always alive. ( _For now,_ HABIT's voice reminded him.) Vinny, Jeff, Alex, Stephanie. The world was at least a bearable type of scary when he had them, and he would count his every last blessing. In those moments he would hug them tight enough to hurt, and they didn't mind, because they were just as scared as he was. Or maybe they didn't mind because at least while he was clinging to them, he was Evan, not HABIT, and Evan was harmless. (Evan was _powerless_.)

Touching them became a necessity. Whenever he was next to them, there was a part of him that needed contact, needed the disproportionate amount of comfort it brought. Pressing against Vinny's side, warmth radiating all around him, when they sat together on the couch. Clasping a hand on Jeff's shoulder in the middle of a conversation and keeping it there, feeling a sharp collarbone under his thumb. They didn't usually initiate it, but they never objected, either; Evan got the feeling they needed it too. Perhaps less intensely than he did, but he wasn't oblivious to their body language, and all of it spelled _home_.

With Stephanie, the physical closeness was almost second nature.

She, too, had her episodes. Less frequently than him, even with all the hormones - was it at all surprising that she had more self-control? - but sometimes it did happen, and unlike Evan, whose feelings of helplessness were as explosive as his entire personality, she would just completely shut down.

It was fucking scary, is what it was. Steph wouldn't cry. Wouldn't talk unless she absolutely had to, and sometimes not even then. She would stare at nothing for hours, eyes glossy and unfocused behind her glasses, and shiver constantly even though she wasn't cold - it reminded Evan very painfully of how Jeff handled trauma, both in their body language and in how he had no fucking clue how to make it better. Anger he knew. Crying, outbursts, yelling things they didn't mean and apologizing later, hugging it out, he knew that too. Fucking away the misery worked, sometimes, but only before it got to this point; when they shut down like this, there was a wall between them and the world, too thick to get through, let alone break.

He learned that in these moments, the only thing he could do was stay close. Stephanie barely spoke and wouldn't react to him trying to snap her out of it with words - even if they were gentle, sometimes especially then - but would eagerly accept his touch. Hands linked together. A kiss on the face, then another, another. She wouldn't reciprocate much, but her eyes would close and she would tremble very slightly, as close to shattering as someone of her resilience could get. Carefully - Evan didn't think anything could really break her, back then, but he is chaos in human form and she was one of the only good parts of his life - he would pull her onto his lap and wrap a blanket around them both, tuck his face into the crook of her neck, and just breathe. It was enough. In their little coccoon of warmth, there was safety, and the silence that enveloped them was sacred.

She would always come back to herself eventually. He knew everything was mostly back to normal when she would tilt his chin up and kiss him, soft and sweet, punctuating it with a smile.

The 'I love you' was implied, but they whispered it anyway.

It was during one of those moments that Stephanie felt her first contraction. Evan knows because he felt it too, with his hand on her belly, and knows it was the first because she muttered a quiet, but extremely heartfelt _'what the fuck'_. It made them both laugh, even as her womb turned impossibly tight under Evan's hand.

The other contractions, however, weren't funny at all. They came sparsely at first - every few hours, then once or twice in an hour - but that night was already a sleepless one, with Steph rolling around on the bed, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable and sleep through the pain.

At three in the morning, Evan suggested they go to the hospital, and she declined.

At four, he insisted, and she once again shook her head no. She'd be fine, she said. They could go in the morning. The contractions were five minutes apart, so they still had time.

(They did. He knew. The doctor had told them what to expect in terms of labor. It was still a bit panic-inducing to watch her squirm in pain and know it would only get worse.)

At five, she was clutching his hand to her chest and whimpering out swear words through each contraction, three minutes apart.

At a quarter to six, finally, Stephanie gave in and agreed to get in the car. Evan must have broken at least eight different traffic laws driving to the hospital, but it wasn't like he really minded - in the grand scheme of things, a few tickets were the least of their concerns. Steph texted their group chat while he drove, and bless them, Vinny and Jeff were at the hospital less than ten minutes after they arrived.

It's a good thing they were there, too, because during the delivery of their much anticipated little girl, Evan was completely fucking _useless_.

He tries, still, to tell himself it wasn't really his fault. That some weird, primal section of his brain reacted before he had time to be rational. It's not convincing enough.

(Is it ever?)

He wanted to be there. He read articles. He watched videos. He has never been particularly squeamish to begin with. But there was so much blood, and Steph was screaming, and it all brought him back to other times when there was blood and screaming and stuff on the floor - the doctor delivering their baby was a resident, she dropped the placenta; Evan's brain was too far gone to differentiate between that and someone's eviscerated guts - and he couldn't. He _couldn't_. All he could do was stand next to Steph throughout all of it, white-faced and shaking and hating himself because he was _fine_. His girlfriend was the one whose legs were spread wide and whose body was being wrecked from the inside out, and there he stood, useless, about to faint.

Deep in his head, HABIT laughed, delighted in the bloodbath.

And then the doctor called him over to see the baby in the incubator - tiny, beautiful, _theirs_ \- and he was overcome with fondness... For exactly thirteen seconds. The time it took him to realize the incubator was right next to where the doctor was stitching up his girlfriend. Could he really be blamed for looking?

(Yes.)

More blood. Steph's vagina torn open and bleeding from the baby's passage. He'd known it could happen, even searched for pictures of birth canal lacerations to make sure he'd be able to look and not make an idiot of himself. But he'd also seen too much carnage outside of a screen, caused too many wounds far too similar to this one - flesh is flesh after all; doesn't really matter where you cut, it all bleeds the same - and the violent flashbacks were something no books or videos could have prepared him for.

The real icing on the cake, the _piece de resistance_ , was noticing that the doctor's surgical cap had bunnies on it. No, not bunnies - _rabbits_.

He ran.

Vinny and Jeff stood near the door, ready to catch him (always, always, and he could never quite pay them back). In a second, Vinny had one strong hand on each of Evan's shoulders, grounding him, reminding him quietly that at least for the moment, they were all safe. That he hadn't been the one to shed blood this time. He said it over and over until Evan stopped shaking.

Meanwhile, Jeff rushed in; Stephanie would later tell Evan how their friend pushed her sweat-sticky hair away from her face and assured her in his gentle voice that Evan was alright. (He had to assure _Steph_ , who had just pushed an _entire person_ out of her body and was now getting a very delicate body part sewn back together, that _Evan_ was alright. God, he fucking hates himself.) Jeff was the first person to hold their little girl, the first one who held out a finger for her tiny hand to grab, and Evan is sure he would have been a lot of other firsts, too, if their baby had stayed alive long enough.

(Whose fault was that, again?)

If he really wants to punish himself, he'll dwell on it. He dwells on it a lot these days.

Things like how Vinny, who never really liked kids to begin with, was such a good sport when it came to helping Evan and Steph look after their baby. In the few days between having her and losing her, anyway. He would have been the uncle who talked to her less like a child and more like a buddy, who would put on a grumpy face but secretly be very pleased when she chose his soft chest to nap on. Maybe he would have taught her to tie her shoes and to ride a bike, smiling proudly when she managed to do whatever it was he'd been helping her with.

Or how Jeff would have been the opposite. He'd be the uncle she ran to for a hug, a story, to show off a drawing or a new toy. The one who would get excited about video games and cartoons with her, pretend to watch them just to keep her company but know every detail of the plot. He would clean up scraped knees easily and efficiently, and would definitely scold her when she was rude, but in a voice that was never threatening, only stern. She would never be afraid of her uncles, no matter what happened.

It's a beautiful fantasy. They'd be a little family, small and dysfunctional but so, so loving. Jeff and Vinny, the best uncles that little girl could have asked for. Steph becoming more and more integral to the group; her and Evan learning to be parents, perhaps husband and wife, too, at some point. Growing old together. Best friends, lovers, everything in between. When the five of them sat around a table to play D&D - Evan as the dungeon master, Vinny and Jeff laughing easily for the first time in what felt like forever, Steph with their still unnamed child having lunch from her chest - it felt like that could really happen. That things were looking up and they were all healing. Recovering.

_Living._

And then they weren't.

Then there was so much fucking blood. There was screaming, begging, tears. There was the sound of bones cracking between teeth, a tiny body mangled, not even given the dignity of laying to rest next to the corpses of her mother and uncle.

He's almost glad, now, when HABIT takes over again. At least then he doesn't really have to be alive and remember. What's the point in being alive, anyway, in a world with no Steph and no baby? No Jeff? Vinny being locked up God knows where? What motivation does he have to wake up, eat, drink, shower, go about his daily routine, when the people he loves most in the world can't do the same and it's his fault?

Revenge. That's his motivation. He can't bring them back, but he can do his best to keep these things from doing more harm.

His best isn't enough.

When he dies - him and Vinny at each other's hands - it's as easy as breathing to forgive his friend. Because he loves him, because it's finally over, and because who knows how much time they have in this little makeshift Eden before it all starts again? Jeff is there, welcoming them with his wonderfully familiar smile, and the three of them being united again makes something finally settle down inside of Evan. Everything is wrong in the world, but this is right.

They find Steph sitting by the lake, more peaceful than Evan remembers her ever being; together, the four of them fall into an embrace that's perfectly graceless. Just a big tangle of arms and warmth and quiet laughter and _I miss you, I love you, I'm sorry_.

Here, in the only place where the monsters can't get them, it's the closest they can get to peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to stick Corenthal in there somewhere, but it just didn't fit with the flow of the story, so I gave up on that. Please let me know what you think, I live for the validation. Also, yes, I'm very aware that some of the timeline doesn't match up with the webseries, but I'm just choosing to call that an artistic choice rather than me being a dumbass.


End file.
